Echo: A Linear Tactical Romantic Suspense Standalone Page 9

  “Is this about the talk?”

  She let out a breath. “Yes.”

  He set the lights down and walked toward her, not really surprised when she took a step back. “Peyton, whatever it is you need, just tell me. We can work it out. We can talk. I know I haven’t been around, and I’m sorry. But we were always able to talk, right?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him like he’d kicked a puppy into oncoming traffic.

  “Really? You expect me to just chat with you after everything?”

  The venom in her voice now had him taking a step back. He held out his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I didn’t know about your accident. I swear. If I had known, I would’ve been here. I would’ve done whatever I could to help you.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “Believe me, I never expected you to show up after…the incident. You’d made it quite clear you wanted nothing to do with me.”

  What? “I don’t understand. I thought you were the one who wanted nothing to do with me. That you’d decided whatever happened between us was nothing more than a one-night stand.”

  “Oh, I think the huge packet of legal papers said otherwise.”

  He froze. Something was happening here that he didn’t understand. “What legal papers?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? That’s a little ridiculous, don’t you think? I can’t even talk about it with you?”

  He took a step toward her. “You can talk about anything with me. As a matter of fact, I wish you would. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “That makes two of us. None of this makes sense.” She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Peaches…” He reached toward her trailing a hand down her arm.

  She jumped back like he’d burned her. “No. No, don’t you touch me, Cade. Don’t Peaches me. Don’t act like you didn’t—”

  She stopped, shaking her head.

  “Like I didn’t let you down five years ago?”

  “Let me down?”

  The wealth of agony in her words was almost impossible to bear. Jesus. He reached for her again but stopped when she seemed to almost shrink in on herself.

  “You call a nondisclosure agreement and wanting me to have an abortion letting me down?”

  Cade felt like every muscle in his body seized up. “What are you talking about?”

  She didn’t answer, just turned and walked over to look at the window to stare at the Wyoming landscape.

  Nondisclosure?

  Abortion?

  Abortion meant…

  “You got pregnant that night? You had an abortion?”

  The silence stretched out so long between them, he thought he would lose his fucking mind right here in the room that had always been a sanctuary for him.

  “Peyton,” he finally said, his voice sounding hoarse even to his own ears. “I need to understand what happened.”

  She turned from the window toward him. “No.”

  His eyes were glued to her face. No.

  No she hadn’t gotten pregnant? Had he misunderstood what she’d said before? This felt like a nightmare. “No?”

  “No, Cade. I didn’t have an abortion as instructed.”

  It took a moment—an excruciatingly long moment—for the pieces to fall into place. “But you did get pregnant.”

  She silently shook her head as if she couldn’t believe he’d even asked her that.

  “Where is the baby—what happened to the baby?”

  “I kept the baby. Jessica Elizabeth Ward. Jess. You might have met her at the picnic on Saturday or at least heard her announce that Charlie had peed herself when her water broke.”

  Curly brown hair. Running around laughing. Holding hands and whispering with Baby’s nephew, Ethan, every once in a while.

  Cade hadn’t paid much attention to the little girl beyond thinking she was cute and vivacious.

  “My daughter?” He grasped the back of his office chair as he tried to take it all in. “I have a daughter?”

  “Do I need to worry about your lawyers showing up at my house since I didn’t have that abortion?”

  He was hearing her almost through a haze. What made her think he would’ve wanted her to abort his child?

  He had a child. Jess. That lively little girl everyone had been talking to and smiling at.

  Why hadn’t he paid more attention to her? How old was she? What was her favorite food? Was she smart? What was her favorite flavor of ice cream? Did she still believe in Santa Claus?

  It felt like thousands of questions circled Cade’s mind. Things he wanted to know about this child. Needed to know.

  But they were all pushed aside by the one question he couldn’t ignore.

  “Why, Peyton?” Before he could even think about what he was doing, he’d moved in front of her, hands on her upper arms. “Why did you keep it from me? Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

  She flinched, staring at him, and he immediately let her go.

  God, after what she’d been through with her stepfather, he shouldn’t touch her in anger, even if he wasn’t hurting her. “I’m sorry. I—”

  The slap caught him across the face struck before he’d even realized she’d moved.

  “How dare you say that to me.” Her words were sharp enough to slice. “You can threaten me with lawyers for breach of contract, or even be angry that I said one thing and did another. But don’t you dare accuse me of not telling you I was pregnant.”

  “God damn it, Peyton.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t going to take a chance on touching her right now.

  But God. Damn. It. What was she talking about?

  She took a step back, and he forced himself to let her. He wasn’t sure what to ask next.

  All the fire seemed to leave her, and she stood there, shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. No matter what, I shouldn’t have hit you.” She rubbed both hands over her face. “I knew this little dream job would be over as soon as I told you about Jess.”

  “You should’ve told me about her long before now. Why didn’t you?” He still couldn’t wrap his head around it.

  She shook her head. “Look. I don’t want anything from you. I signed the papers five years ago, and I’ve never talked to anyone about Jess’s father. You’re safe. The NDA is still in effect. I followed everything except having the abortion. If you want the money back that you paid me, I can get it to you. It’ll just take a while.”

  With every sentence she spoke Cade felt more lead inside his chest. It was all so impossible; he didn’t even know where to start.

  But Jesus. Oh Jesus God, she was talking with too many specifics for this to be a simple misunderstanding. “No. No, I don’t want any money. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  She nodded sadly. “I’m going to go now. Obviously, we can’t shoot anything today. And me directing isn’t going to work out, things will be too awkward between us. I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”

  “Awkward.” It was all he could manage to parrot. He was going to be sick.

  She nodded, staring at him with those brown eyes. “I’m going to go. Thanks for the opportunity here, and you know, for not making me pay back the money. I—I…”

  She turned and ran out the door.

  “Peyton—” He took a few steps after her but stopped himself.

  There was so much they had to talk about. But not until he had all the facts.

  Not until he knew how guilty—even if unintentionally—he was in this farce.

  And he knew exactly the person to talk to.

  Everett rushed toward the writing cave as Cade exited.

  “Hey, what the hell happened? Peyton just ran out of here like the place was on fire.”

  “I can’t talk about it right now, Ev. Where’s Mark?”

  “Back in the security office, I think. Is everything okay? Is it something with the stalker?”

  Cade gave a curt shake of his head. No everything definitely wasn’t okay.

  “No. Nothing about the stalker. I’ve just got to talk to him.”

  Everett nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll come with you. Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out together.”

  Cade looked over at the man who was not only a business partner but one of his best friends. “Not this time, Ev. This is something I have to do on my own. At least for a little while.”

  Everett squeezed his shoulder. “Right. Okay. Well, I’m here whenever you need me.”

  Damn it, Cade was hurting people no matter what he did. But he couldn’t worry about Everett right now. This situation with Peyton, and the shit storm Cade suspected was about to hit, had to come first. “Thanks, man.”

  Without waiting for a response, he jogged back to the small room Mark had set up as a security office. Cade knocked briefly before opening the door. Mark sat at the desk, which faced the door, looking over documents on an iPad.

  “Boss.” Mark nodded at him as Cade came in and sat in the single chair in front of the desk. “Everything okay?”

  “I was wrong. Tell me everything you know about Peyton Ward.”

  Mark put down the iPad and picked up a folder that rested at left corner of his desk. “I see. Are you sure? Is there a certain place you’d like to start?”

  “Let’s start with the fact that she gave birth to my daughter a little over four years ago, and for some reason thought I wanted her to have an abortion and has signed a nondisclosure agreement stating she would never talk about me being the father of her child.”

  Mark pressed his lips together. The man either had an excellent poker face or had already been aware of this information.

  “I’d have to agree. That’s an excellent place to start.”

  Chapter 13

  “What did you do?”

  An hour after learning everything Mark knew, every instinct Cade had told him to get to Peyton as soon as possible to fall down on his knees and beg her forgiveness for what had happened five years ago.

  It was so much worse than he could have imagined.

  But he couldn’t go, not until he talked to his aunt and tried to make some sort of sense out of all this.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to need you to be a little more specific.” Cecelia looked up at him from behind her rather dainty Queen Anne desk. She’d had that desk as long as Cade could remember. The gentle lines and curves of the piece of furniture were in direct odds to the shrewd and often cunning business decisions she made from her computer on top of it.

  Cecelia had always been the business-minded person in their family, even when Cade’s father had been alive.

  “Peyton Ward.”

  Cecelia let out a sigh and closed the laptop, then stood slowly and deliberately. “What exactly did she tell you?”

  Cade swallowed the fury that had been threatening to consume him since Mark had shown him the file. He had to work the problem. Get the answers he needed from Cecelia who was only going to respond to communication on the same level in which she operated: cold and collected.

  Answers first, then he could lose his shit.

  “Peyton didn’t tell me anything. Or, I should say didn’t tell me anything I shouldn’t have already known since my signature was on the nondisclosure agreement and a check for ten thousand dollars.”

  Cecelia didn’t even flinch.

  “Technically, Peyton should be required to return that money since she didn’t follow the terms she originally agreed to.”

  Cecelia knew. She knew about Jess. She knew he had a daughter, and she hadn’t told him.

  Cade had been wrong; he was going to lose his shit right here and now.

  He slammed his hand down so hard on Cecelia’s desk pens and papers flew off.

  “You had no right. No fucking right.”

  Cecelia threw up her hands and walked over to the minibar in the corner of the room. “I had no idea you’d been involved with Peyton Ward. You never once talked about her. Never brought her home to meet us. When I looked into her, it didn’t look like you had any connections whatsoever.”

  “You should’ve asked me.”

  She poured herself two fingers of Macallan. “I know you’d like to make it as simple as that, but it’s really not.”

  “Peyton and I had sex when she was eighteen. She got pregnant and thinks that I told her to have an abortion and never speak about this again. It’s a little difficult to understand what’s not simple about that. Jesus, Aunt Cecelia, it’s hard to understand what’s not horrible about that.”

  She took a sip of her expensive whiskey. “I was trying to protect you. Protect the family. It was a tumultuous time. Oliver had just died. Your career was skyrocketing. I was trying to protect us from anyone who might take advantage.”

  “And little eighteen-year-old Peyton Ward was one of the big baddies at the gate?”

  Cecelia threw back the rest of what was in her glass. “The Ward family has been around a lot longer than you might think. Peyton does not come from the best of stock.”

  He didn’t even try to stop his eyes from rolling. “Regardless of Peyton’s pedigree, you should’ve told me she was pregnant. I know you had power of attorney for me, and I was more interested in making music at that time than I was taking care of the family fortune. But you should have made sure I was aware of this.”

  Cecelia let out a little sigh. “I know it would be much easier for you to cast me as the villain in this little play, but before you do that, I’d like to show you something.”

  He followed as she set her glass down walked out of the study and up toward the attic. Cade wouldn’t even have thought his aunt knew where the attic was, but she walked up the stairs and into the extended room with a purpose that spoke of distinct knowledge. She didn’t stop until she was standing in front of file boxes stacked taller than Cade.

  “What is that?”

  “Your fan mail and items sent to you at this address.”

  “You’ve kept five years’ worth of fan mail?”

  Cecelia laughed. “Oh no dear, I have a service that goes through that for me now, not that I get much here anymore. This was all from the first few months after your first song came out. The weeks following Oliver’s death.”

  That was a lot more than he would’ve expected.

  Cecelia ran her fingers down some boxes, obviously looking for something specific. She found the box she wanted and slid it out of the pile. Then opened it, only to take out another, smaller, box, metal this time, with a combination lock on it.

  She shook her head ruefully as she placed it on a box and unlocked it. “I don’t know what I thought this tiny lock would protect us from. Believe it or not, I was doing the best I could at the time. You weren’t the only one whose world was reeling.”

  She pulled out a group of files from the box and held them against her chest. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but between your music sales and the fact that you had recently inherited all of Oliver’s money, you were one of the wealthiest twenty-one-year-olds in the country. And it was all new to me too, Cade. Your fame, the media. Plus, I suddenly had all the O’Conner business decisions to make. It was the reason I took over your email address—because it was linked to the business. You had a life and career in Nashville and I thought I was doing the best thing for you by running as much interference as possible.”

  “But why would you do something like this?”

  She let out a sigh. “Within six weeks of your father’s funeral, I received three letters from people claiming to be your illegitimate sibling, two from women claiming they’d already given birth to your child, and four claiming to be currently pregnant.”

  “Jesus.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d had no idea.

  “I hired a private investigator. Long story short, you don’t have any illegitimate siblings, none of the women who claimed to have had your children actually had, and only two of the four women claiming to be pregnant were pregnant at all.”

  “Peyton was one of those two.”

  Cecelia nodded. “Peyton Ward was one of those two. But the other, Sarah Lennon, was making a lot more noise. Threatening to go to the press, the police, the queen. Hell, everyone.”

  He vaguely recalled that. “I remember you asking me if I knew her. If we’d ever dated.”

  “You told me you hadn’t, and I believed you. Our lawyers called her bluff, offered a DNA test. She made some noise about how that might harm her fetus. She took a small settlement, and we never heard from her again.”

  “And Peyton?”

  “Miss Ward had the bad luck of sending her email so that it arrived as I was walking out the door from the Sarah Lennon settlement.”

  Shit.

  “I was already familiar with the Ward family and the trouble they could cause,” Cecelia continued. “I knew for a fact you’d never dated Peyton Ward. After what we had gone through, I decided to take a more abrupt approach with her. I offered her the lump sum to terminate the pregnancy, required a nondisclosure agreement, and asked her not to contact you again. I figured if she was legitimately pregnant with your child, we’d hear from her again. If not. . .”

  If not, the O’Conner family had dodged a bullet.

  And yet somehow the life of an eighteen-year-old had been completely ruined.

  Cade ran a hand through his hair. Cecelia was to blame for some of this, but not all. He should’ve followed up. Instead of being an ass and getting his feelings hurt when she hadn’t responded to his messages, he should’ve followed through and made sure she was okay.

  The truth was, he’d wanted to believe Peyton was okay. He’d been excited and focused on his own career, so while his pride may have been pricked that she hadn’t wanted to talk to him, he hadn’t really worried about her. Not the way he should have.

  He should’ve made sure.

  “Cade, I swear I was doing what I thought was best. Protecting the family name the best way I knew how. Sometimes that means making ugly choices.”

  Cecelia looked away.

  “But at some point you realized the baby was mine, didn’t you?”

  “Not until last year. Believe it or not, Peyton Ward and I do not run in the same circles, even in a town the size of Oak Creek. I hadn’t really thought much about her. Then I saw the child.”